Beauty and the Duke Read online

  “But this is all so terribly romantic,” Lady Rebecca said, her melodic voice fraught with youthful romanticism. Her brother dragged her away before she could say more.

  Christine suffered momentary panic that she might actually tear up. This made no sense. Amelia took Christine’s hands into her own. “I so wanted to tell you everything, but Joseph wanted us to be together when we shared the news. I thought for sure my excitement tonight must have given something away.” She peered up at Joseph with utter adoration in her eyes. “But we couldn’t be happier.”

  A cool gust of wind pushed against Christine’s mantelet and stirred the refuse on the streets, bringing with it the unpleasant scent of the Thames. She tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ears and remained silent.

  She had planned everything so perfectly. And even if she had not, the stipend Joseph would receive from the museum was hardly enough to support a wife. Swallowing the constriction in her throat at last, Christine focused again and realized Joseph and Amelia were waiting for her to respond. And she still did not know what to say.

  “This project is important to me, Christine,” Joseph finally said when she remained speechless. “I have a chance to make a name for myself. That won’t happen at Sommershorn Abbey. You must know that. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  Joseph then peered down at Amelia, the action so tender, Christine was left even more confused. “We will be traveling to Gretna Green later tonight,” he said. “You will understand why we cannot remain for the entire ceremony this evening. I will have to leave after they make the announcement about my appointment.”

  Amelia touched Christine’s arm. “It is not our want to hurt you.”

  And yet they had hurt her. She felt as if Joseph had plunged a knife into her heart. Behind him the sun was about to leave the sky. The same sunset that tinted the clouds amber also colored the tips of his blond hair. For the first time in all the years since she had known him, she realized she had never taken the opportunity to slide her fingers through that golden hair or to tell him how she felt about him. Seeing his affection for Amelia made her feel the loss even more for she was losing them both.

  She swallowed again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you would have said something unhelpful and neither of us wanted to be made to feel guilty,” Joseph said quietly. “You have Sommershorn Abbey. You don’t need Amelia and me,” he added, as if that adequately explained everything, as if Christine had not worked hard and sacrificed her own dreams to make the school a success.

  “Unhelpful, as in…” she fumbled through her thoughts. “How can you support a wife on a professor’s stipend? I know how this museum finances its expeditions. Most of the expense will come out of your pocket.”

  “Sometimes one has to have the courage to act, Chrissie,” Joseph said. “Or the moment will pass, and it will never come again. I will not be that man who wakes up tomorrow regretting what I did not try today. Your father once told me that it is far better to have failed trying than never to have made the effort at all.”

  Someone bumped Joseph, interrupting his conversation. Torchlight whisking in the breeze caught the sheen of long satin gowns, polished silver cufflinks, and tiaras. The last of the crowd was moving through the doors. Christine could hear the orchestra warming up.

  Christine wanted to speak, to say anything to mend the rift that had opened between them. Her emotions were illogical and incongruous, completely reckless and without regard to the fact that she was happy for Joseph and Amelia. But the words would not come. She could not accept that all her plans of five minutes ago had been dashed to the rocks and devoured by sharks.

  She could not!

  Then Joseph laid his hand on Amelia’s arm, and the moment for talking was gone.

  He pressed his other hand against Amelia’s back, his gaze hesitating on Christine as if accepting that she would not follow. “You’ll be sitting at the head table with Lord Bingham and the other dignitaries,” he said. “We probably won’t have an opportunity to speak to each other later. I just wanted to congratulate you for having the courage to publish your father’s work. I know it would have meant a lot to him.”

  Before she could tell Joseph to go to blazes and that she loved her father, despite what people may have thought, he had already turned away, placing Amelia slightly ahead of him, a stance that safeguarded her from arms and elbows. Christine watched them disappear, her height allowing her to follow his progress easily amid the thinning crowd. They were an attractive couple, she admitted, as they shuffled through the doors. The same doors Lord Sedgwick and his sister had entered minutes before. The urge to weep suddenly vanished.

  Erik.

  Here in London. At this very gala.

  And a newer more terrible thought than Joseph and Amelia traveling to the other side of the world took hold in Christine’s mind. Lord Sedgwick was a duke. He and his sister would probably be sitting at the same table of honor as she.

  She raised her gaze to the heavens. And the night had only just begun.

  Erik watched as Christine accepted another glass of champagne off a tray presented her by one of an army of footmen. Her fourth, Erik considered, as he sipped his own glass. Beneath an enormous chandelier, footmen threaded their way among the tables carrying large silver platters crowded with demitasse-size cups of melting sherbet. At the far end of the hall, an orchestra played a jaunty reel and most of the younger guests had already made their way onto the floor.

  He found his sister enjoying the lively music. Becca was the reason he’d consented to come here tonight. But she was not the reason he stayed. He looked past her toward the elaborate entrance to the exhibits. The museum had closed its doors to the public hours ago and only the guests of the gala roamed the inner sanctum of the museum. Towering planters of palms and strands of orchids festooned the rotunda recalling the garden of Babylon, a place in history noted for wealth, luxury, and wickedness. He thought it an amusing contrast for the Fossil Society, an organization that fostered images of carnivorous monsters that once roamed the earth.

  An hour had passed, during which the members present ceremoniously honored the achievements of their dead Society members. Christine sat farther down the table from him, her father’s plaque beside her, a simple tribute given to her for Professor Sommers’s work. Erik watched her gently polish it twice when she thought no one was looking—only to look up this last time and discover someone was watching. She eased a serviette over the plaque.

  They had not spoken since their introduction outside on the steps of the museum. Tonight was the first time Erik had seen her in ten years. Her body was a little fuller and rounder, and looked softer in all the places a man would find his pleasure. She had the same full mouth he remembered. She had not worn spectacles when he knew her before, but she still had the same large, intelligent blue eyes that surveyed the world with a mild skepticism. Eyes that had a way of looking inside you.

  The way she had always looked at him.

  The way she was looking at him now. Half-annoyed—flushed, as if he’d caught her performing fellatio rather than the simple human act of remembering her father.

  He grinned into his glass as if to tell her she could glare him to hell and back and it made no difference. He’d do as he pleased. She was still self-governing, opinionated, and willful, and completely unaware of the way every man at the table watched her, he thought as he shifted his attention to the boor beside her. If Lord Bingham ogled her any closer he’d have his face in her bosoms. But Christine, as usual, was oblivious.

  Before his thoughts could overrule his restraint, Erik forced himself to turn in his chair and look back to the dance floor. Bingham was just one of dozens Erik had met since arriving in London two days ago.

  Someone suddenly jostled his elbow, nearly spilling his champagne. Erik saved his glass as Lord Bingham plopped his large form down on the chair next to him. “How are you enjoying our little soiree, your grace?” Bingham jovially offered
a glass of champagne, then frowned slightly as he noted the glass Erik already held in his hand. “Capital stuf’ for putting the life into you. Only the bes’ for those who know the difference between quality and mere French swill.” He winked. “Men of our means like their quality. Right-oh chap? Drink up, I say.” He tipped his glass and drank.

  Erik’s gaze moved past Bingham to where Christine had been sitting a moment before. Her chair was empty. A quick search of the crowd found her moving among the tables toward the door. He’d noted Darlington and the little blond who was to be his wife had slipped out after the awards ceremony. Christine was no doubt headed home.

  “You’re wasting your time with tha’ one,” Bingham sniffed. “Set in her ways. A cold fish. Spends most o’ her time at Sommershorn Abbey managing the education of a bunch of girls. Can’t do much else since her father passed. Doesn’t run with our crowd. Not the right experience.”

  Erik gave Bingham his full attention. For the most part people avoided Erik as if he were a case of poison ivy. They skirted around him—unless they wanted something from him. It always amused him when a person thought he knew Erik well enough to be his friend, a fact that would make some conclude he had a sense of humor.

  Bingham cleared his throat. “Pleasant enough assistant when she is volunteering here though,” he hastily added. “Indispensable. Wouldn’t know what to do without her help cataloging the exhibits. Has one here herself, someplace.”

  “Yes, I saw it. I believe it is located in the basement.”

  Bingham swallowed more champagne. “We’ve not had anyone of your stature take an interest in our organization in quite some time. You are here in London for the Season, your grace?”

  “Business only.”

  “That’s right. You’ve not participated in our London Season in…how many years?” When Erik did not reply, his grin faded and he gave a little cough. “Darlington mentioned you had an interest in fossils. You have certainly come to the right place. Are you a collector? Or a seller?”

  Adjusting his evening jacket, Erik rose. “My sister is the collector. Not I.”

  “I see.” Bingham hastily followed Erik to his feet. “Frankly, I was surprised when Darlington came to me and asked for two invitations to this gala. He said you corresponded with Lord Charles Sommers. Professor Sommers to all of us who knew him well. God bless his saintly soul wherever it may be.” He chuckled, and the champagne in his glass slopped over and splashed on the man’s waistcoat. “Most thought the man belonged in Bedlam. Soft in the head, if you know what I mean. But his book is wildly popular with this society. Do you have an interest in the existence of dragons?”

  Erik remained silent, waiting for Bingham to get to the point.

  “I only ask because Professor Sommers rarely corresponded with fossil hobbyists,” Bingham said in an undertone. “His interests tended toward the serious collector. A person would have to have something valuable in his possession to hold Sommers’s interest. Perhaps more than personal business brings you to London?”

  “Business is never personal, Bingham.” Ever. He’d learned long ago there was little he could not buy. “Now”—Eric looked toward the doorway through which Christine had just disappeared—“if you will excuse me.”

  Bingham sputtered. “Yes, of course.”

  But Erik was already walking away.

  “Good night, Miss Sommers,” the watchman said as Christine passed him in the darkened hallway.

  “Good night, Mr. Traverse. Please tell your mother I said hello.”

  Cloak in hand, Christine hurried through the Hall of Unicorns toward the back door. This wing of the museum was only slightly quieter than the corridor she had left, as it was closed off to the public. But music from the orchestra reverberated against the ceiling.

  She’d made a brief detour to the cloakroom, but other than the few times a guest stopped her, congratulating her on Papa’s award or asking about Joseph’s new appointment or why Aunt Sophie had not attended the festivities tonight, she had made a successful exit. No one could accuse her of running away if no one knew she’d escaped.

  As Christine rounded a corner, she nearly collided with…Erik! A gasp escaped her.

  He was standing with his arms crossed, his shoulder leaning against the doorjamb, quite at his leisure with her effort to elude him. He had the most piercing eyes she had ever known, and they did not waver from hers. All night she’d been forced to smile and pretend Erik Boughton was not sitting five feet down the table from her. And now she no longer need pretend. Such was the irony of her life. She was almost relieved to finally face him.

  “It warms the cockles of my heart to know you’ve na’ changed, leannanan.”

  The gently spoken Gaelic endearment he’d once bestowed on her lifted her chin a notch. She vehemently disliked the familiar thrill that arced through her. “Do not presume to still know me, Lord Sedgwick.”

  The faintest smile lifted the graceful curve of his mouth. He had made no move to detain her. He didn’t have to. His very presence held her immobile in invisible arms of warmth. She had the uncomfortable impression he knew exactly the turmoil his presence was causing her.

  “How have you been, Christine?”

  “Very well.” She paused as her mind cast about for something more intelligent to say. “And you?”

  He answered the same.

  Ten years all summed up in two little words. It wasn’t even as if they had parted on poor terms. Not completely anyway. She had simply departed and vanished to another continent, and he had wed her cousin Charlotte.

  But the fact that he was here, not only in her part of England but at the museum, was an infringement. “Why are you here at the Fossil Society gala?” she asked. “I cannot imagine that these people would interest you.”

  “No, I imagine you cannot imagine any such thing. Becca has an interest in fossils. I am in London on business and so I thought to bring her. Darlington arranged for the introduction to your Lord Bingham. And so here I am.”

  The corner of her mouth crooked slightly at the memory of Bingham having to surrender his seat of prominence at their table to Sedgwick. “My Lord Bingham is not used to being outranked or-flanked. He likes to think himself king even if it is only the Fossil Society he rules. Few remember it was Papa who founded the organization.”

  After a pause, he said, “I was sorry to hear about your father’s passing.”

  She studied Erik Boughton’s handsome face in the sconce light. The last time she had stood this close to him she had been deeply, irrevocably in love. “He always liked you.”

  Erik gave a humorless laugh. “Despite the fact no one else in your family did?”

  “If Papa found fault with you it wasn’t because he believed you gave my cousin scarlet fever,” she said.

  For a moment, Erik started to say something more.

  With each heartbeat, Christine felt herself pulling back into her comfort zone where everything was safe and in its place. A place she could control. For the space of a few breaths, neither of them spoke. Then he asked, “What happened to you after you left England?”

  “I spent seven years with Papa and later Mr. Darlington, going from dig to dig, from the Rhineland to South America, only to return to England and unearth our largest discovery ever, near Lyme Regis. It was either that or learn to play the pianoforte. I was never any good at playing the lady.” Normally she did not allow herself to blather and her impulsive words made her blush. She cleared her throat. “But that does not mean I do not have standards. I have the school’s reputation to think of, after all.”

  “Obviously no student’s doting papa has seen you in that gown.”

  She peered down at herself, pleased that he had not only noted what she wore, but also considered it provocative. She rarely had the opportunity to wear such a dress…and tonight was supposed to have been a special occasion. “What is wrong with this gown?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “You put the highest-paid demirep to
shame.” Leaning nearer, he said, “And I mean that as a compliment.”

  Disdain for his humor flattened her smile. “Clearly you have developed the manners of a poet. A very poor one.”

  “I never had manners of a poet. I thought that was why I interested you.”

  The triumphant end of a lively reel rattled the artifacts in the preview case. Silence followed, startling in its intensity, as if it signified more than the end to this evening’s festivities. Yet, neither of them hurried to be the first to say good-bye.

  Then he stood aside for her to pass. But as she slipped past him, his hand snagged her arm, turning her. His tension was so great he might have been made of pressed iron. Aware of a sudden burn behind her eyes and his breath against her temple, she lifted her chin.

  “I am glad to see you doing well, Christine.”

  “You as well, your grace.”

  His expression changed subtly, unmistakably.

  Then she was walking past him into the fog that had settled over London like pea soup tonight. As she hailed a hansom and then leaned back against the aged, cracked leather seat in the cab, she drew in her breath, recognizing tonight had not gone well for her self-confidence, which was normally unflappable under the most dire of circumstances. Everything had seemed to escalate to more than it should have. Erik’s presence had only added to the burden of Joseph’s rejection for it reminded her of a far more painful time in her life when she had watched the man she’d once loved wed another.

  She had met the infamous duke of Sedgwick her first Season in London at a ball given for her cousin Charlotte at the Somerset manse. That year had been the only time in her life when she’d contemplated trading her scientific passions for something…something elusively magic. She’d been young enough to feel her heart awaken to the first stirrings of love—or what she had believed was love. At eighteen, her world could not have been brighter or filled with more promise.